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2025 Annual Grad Symposium
December 4, 2025 | 4:30 PM 鈥� 8:15 PM | Free
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre
SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
A thought that has little inkling of itself is a thought in the act, a thinking in the making of an occasion of experience. - Erin Manning 鈥楢gainst Method鈥� (61)
Attention and attending differently; tending to the ruins and tracing the edges; shifting boundaries and fluctuating states鈥攚e gather to share research in progress, thoughts in the act, ideas both in and about flux, and also, and other things, and the rest, etc.
The SCA 2025 Graduate Symposium brings together different forms of artistic and scholarly research, featuring work by MA and MFA cohort members Emma Best, Katie Belcher, Wyldie Bracewell, Alex Calcagno, Dom Chan, Liz Ellis, marcela o帽ate-trules, Christopher Outten, Taha Saraei, Jaeden Walton, and Boyu Xu. The evening will consist of 5-10 minute presentations by each scholar, followed by a short Q&A session.
We acknowledge that this symposium is taking place on the traditional, ancestral, and occupied territories of the xwm蓹胃kw蓹y虛蓹m (Musqueam), Skwxw煤7mesh (Squamish) and S蓹l虛铆lw蓹ta涩 (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. We recognize the wisdom and survivance of our host nations, whose stewardship of the land has endured for millennia.
The MA and MFA graduate students participating in this symposium hail from these lands and across Turtle Island, and from Australia, The Bahamas, Chile, China, Hong Kong, and Iran. Each of these origin points hold complex histories of imperialism and colonial violence. The continued impact of settler-colonialism on Indigenous ways of knowing (ecological, social, gender/sexuality, epistemologies, practice, and more) informs our experience as scholars and artists on these territories.
Schedule
- 4:30 PM: doors, food & mingling
- 5:10 PM: presentations (each panel will be followed by a Q&A)
- Panel one: within
- Dom Chan
- Wyldie Bracewell
- Liz Ellis
- Taha Saraei
- Q&A
- Intermission
- Panel two: or what remains
- Emma Best
- marcela o帽ate-trules
- Alex Calcagno
- Boyu Xu
- Q&A
- Intermission
- Panel three: and without
- Katie Belcher
- Christopher Outten
- Jaeden Walton
- Q&A
- 7:45 PM: mingle & linger
- 8:15 PM: event end
MA Cohort Presenters
Emma Best is a dance teacher, choreographer, and scholar interested in embodiment and the relationship between bodies and the cinematic screen. Her current research interests include cinema studies, horror, dance in film, and explorations of feminist and gender theory.
Research Abstract: In my paper 鈥楴owhere Girl: (Re)claiming Abject and (Re)coming-of-age in Yorgos Lanthimos鈥� Poor Things (2023)鈥� I ask how protagonist Bella鈥檚 (re)coming-of-age throughout the film portrays female embodiment through Julia Kristeva鈥檚 concept of abjection, and questions how the affective discomfort it produces complicates the film鈥檚 feminist meaning and reception.
Katie Belcher is an artist, curator, and scholar engaged in the theory and practice of drawing as a process of translation. Through her curatorial and organizational work, she has challenged modes of presentation, and made space for care in artistic practice.
Research Abstract: My paper 鈥楧rawing/withdrawing: towards an understanding of drawing as performance鈥� considers drawing through a Performance Studies lens. Framed by a triad of making, unmaking, and remaking, my research develops a theory of drawing that positions it as an approach rather than an artistic medium.
Dom Chan works across curation, collection management, and exhibition making, with experience in Hong Kong and abroad.
Research Abstract: My paper, 鈥楽hinji Ohmaki鈥檚 Sink: Meditation in the Anthropocene through Ivakhiv鈥檚 Triad 鈥� Emptiness, Heart, and Mystery鈥�, looks at how the contemplative potential in contemporary art resonates with Buddhist ideas of emptiness, impermanence, and interdependence. I consider how such encounters open spaces of awareness and reflection, akin to mindfulness that emerges through meditation practice.
MFA Cohort Presenters
Wyldie Bracewell is an artist working primarily in sound, whose work explores listening, its limits, and is led by a desire to explore sound through a myriad of lenses and senses.
Research Abstract: My paper stems obliquely from an interest in sound collage. It investigates things that hold other things, things like the Renfrew Ravine Labyrinth, Hildegard von Bingen's Cosmic Egg, and poems. It asks a few questions about insides and outsides - where they touch, and (mostly) how to talk about it.
Alex Calcagno is an artist interested in vibes & waves, chaos & cosmos, night & nothing.
Research Abstract: My paper, 鈥楴ight Soil: Nocturnal Refrains of Waste in the Solar Economy, 鈥� explores the realm of night through Georges Bataille鈥檚 Solar Economy and Gilles Deleuze and F茅lix Guattari鈥檚 notion of the Refrain. By doing so, I illuminate the value of night's hidden relations, heterogeneous ecologies, and alternative modes of knowing, being and living often overlooked by the blind spots of dominant day-centred paradigms and operations.
Liz Ellis is an artist, graphic designer, and arts organizer working across mark-making, text, and listening-based projects to explore the possibilities and limits of communication.
Research Abstract: My paper 鈥楶eripherally (Not) Reading Scribbles鈥� engages in the materiality of unreading, by tracing the trajectory into and within a moment of attending to an almost-textual mark found in everyday spaces, asking: what is reading, and how might one unlearn to read that which eludes readability in the first place?
marcela o帽ate-trules is a lens-based artist + a friend/comrade/sister/daughter. she is committed to filling gaps in the archive by creating (audio)visual records of the people and territories closest to her heart. through a practice of 鈥渆mbodied archiving,鈥� she listens deeply and bears witness with her body, mind, heart, spirit, and camera.
Research Abstract: My research examines how contemporary diasporic, exilic, and Indigenous filmmakers work with experimental techniques and alternative photochemical processes to rearticulate home, homeland, rupture, and return. I ask how these material and aesthetic interventions counter what Macarena G贸mez-Barris (2017) terms 鈥渢he extractive view."
Christopher Outten is a Bahamian visual artist whose practice blends painting, sculpture, and performance to explore Black identity, mythology, and belonging.
Research Abstract: My research follows alter egos, particularly that of the Kettle Man. He is a living vessel who helps me hold concepts such as imposter syndrome, racial pressure, and the quiet performances I slip into as a Black man in shifting spaces. Through sound, motion, and Bahamian memory, he becomes the body where my fear and courage can breathe together.
Taha Saraei works in the unstable intervals between lens, performance, screen, and spatial presence by preserving the instability of these gaps and allowing mistranslation to mediate perception.
Research Abstract: My paper uses Kaja Silverman鈥檚 definition of the photograph in 鈥淭he Miracle of Analogy鈥� to focus on the relation to its temporal setup, examining this viewing experience through Richard Schechner鈥檚 definition of performance in 鈥淏etween Theater and Anthropology.鈥� I explore how framing, spatial arrangement, and other conditions can direct the viewer to perceive the gap between the photograph鈥檚 origin and its present appearance, and to accept the photograph, consciously or unconsciously, as an analogy of the world.
Jaeden Walton is a performing arts designer and academic scenographer based in Vancouver, originally from the land of the Syilx Okanagan peoples, with a practice rooted in Canadian scenographic traditions.
Research Abstract: My research approaches the body as a scenographic element, a living stage upon which identity is continually designed and redesigned. Life is an ongoing negotiation of performance between how we present ourselves and how we are perceived.
Boyu Xu is an artist from Tianjin, China, based in Vancouver. Their interest is working with photography and moving images. Their practice weaves ecological storytelling with urban memory, investigating how unfinished architectures, birds, and human longing form shared worlds within the landscapes of late capitalism.
Research Abstract: My research is inspired by a lifetime of living with ruins in my hometown and explores how to coexist with them. Drawing on the work of Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, Max Woodworth, and Timothy Morton, this study seeks an ecological way of reshaping our understanding of progress beyond the assumptions of endless growth.